Boost your work vocabulary in a week
Eva BrukYou've signed an offer at an international company — congratulations, you start in a week! How do you prepare yourself to communicate in English?
Life is full of trade-offs and competing priorities. Realistically, learning languages rarely gets to the top ranks, which is rational in our routine circumstances. But then unexpected pivots happen, and we need to adapt quickly.
I’m not always in favor of quick fixes, especially when it comes to learning a language, and here I explain why. However, quick fixes are good to have at your disposal when you need them🙂
So if you are on a tight deadline, here is one thing that will help you fast:
The onboarding exercise
Imagine that you have to onboard a new employee joining your last company to replace you. You need to walk this person through everything you do, day to day, step by step. Explain your key areas of responsibility, tasks in each of those areas, their frequency, deadlines, who you report them to. In English.
Open your workspace, go over your tasks, and explain all the how-to. Here’s a list of questions to help you start:
📍What is the task about and what’s its purpose?
📍Who assigns it? What communication tools are used?
📍What tools / software do you need to complete this task? How does it work?
📍How to go about it (in detail: which specific actions to take)?
📍What are some important points to keep in mind?
📍What is the deadline for this task?
📍How regularly do you need to do that?
📍Who do you report it to? Who do you ask for feedback?
You can actually record your screen and talk in the process — as if you were recording a real video for someone who’s going to learn from you. Then watch your videos, see if some things can be explained more clearly and concisely, try again.
It’s going to feel very awkward in the beginning (I’ve been there), and it is a time-consuming activity. But if you spend 2-3 hours a day practicing, in a week you’re going to feel much more confident and prepared to communicate with your new team in English.
So think about what responsibilities at your last workplace you’ll have in your future position. They probably won’t match 100% but there will be some overlap. So you can focus on those overlapping activities and practice with the most relevant tasks🎯
If you struggle with the explanations
Sometimes our language blockers are psychological. Sometimes you might realize you don't have the vocabulary to explain everything you want to explain... I still recommend trying to do it in your own words first. Even if you sound clunky. To reinforce the idea that you can do it by yourself and it's good enough for starters.
If you have additional bandwidth, here are a few more things that can help you:
✅Formulate your tasks in simple words and ask AI to give you the main collocations to sound more natural. It's pretty trivial advice, but we sometimes forget that this option is there. Just make sure you practice saying what you need to say by yourself repeatedly and aloud.
✅The all-time favorite shadowing exercise that no one ever sticks with. It does help, though. Find YouTube videos where folks discuss your scope of responsibilities, and speak together with them. You can practice it for 10-15 min a day in the first couple of months, since your brain needs multiple repetitions before adopting structures unconsciously.
✅Once you start communicating with your English-speaking colleagues, note the phrases that they use. Jot down 2-3 prases a day and try to implement them in your speech. You can even write them on a sticky note and attach it to your screen so it's there when you need it.
Wish you the best of luck!
Read more:
Language Barrier: what it's protecting us from
What's my English level and what does it mean?
Is the IT vocabulary bubble enough?
Want to practice English in 1-1 meetings / in a community? Visit my page💜